CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_
Reported by Peter Kirstein/UCL
ODA Minutes
Current Status of Implementations
As a background for the discussions on Pilots, the current status of
implementations was reviewed. The following were known to be available,
potentially, to the IETF Office Document Architecture Working Group:
PROVIDER PACKAGE
BBN/UCL SLATE/ODA
Bull WORD for WINDOWS/ODA
DEC DECWRITE/ODA
UPC/ICL WORDPERFECT/ODA
XEROX VIEWPOINT/ODA
The status of each is discussed below:
BBN/UCL-SLATE/ODA
There has been a Release of v1.1 of the BBN SLATE/UCL ODA software; it
converts between SLATE v1.2 and ODA/ODIF Q112. This is freely available
to anyone who has a license for BBN SLATE 1.2. The software is made
available currently on SPARCstations, but is believed to be easily
portable to IBM RISC 6000 machines and DEC Ultrix workstations. There
is documentation for the system on the normal ietf-osi-oda infoserver.
At present the system operates with the UCL PP message (v5.0 or later
versions), and thus can operate over SMTP (with UUencode) or X.400;
later versions will work with the extensions to SMTP proposed in the
SMTP IETF working party. It is possible to interoperate with any other
SMTP mail systems which does UUencoding.
It has been agreed with BBN, that they will provide for the IETF Pilot
250 copies of SLATE v1.2, and will maintain it with later releases. It
is restricted to ``academic and research institutes only''; others must
purchase the SLATE from BBN. The software will be updated as later
releases of SLATE become available. The whole documentation will be
provided by UCL - who will include the BBN SLATE documentation. The BBN
portion of the software will be provided to US participants by a
``Shrink-wrapped Licence''; non-US sites will have to sign a BBN license
supplied by UCL. In both cases, UCL will keep a register of copies
supplied, and must furnish that to BBN. UCL will make a small handling
charge for the distribution.
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Bull-Word for Windows/ODA
There will be a version of this software made available to the Working
Group; it will run on a DOS PC, and must be integrated by the using site
with a mail system. The Bull software is designed for conversion
between RTF and ODA Q112, but they use it only with WORD for WINDOWS. To
date there are still some slight problems with the software, but an
improved version is expected by the end of August 1. If this is up to
expectations, UCL expect that it should be available to the Working
Group during the 4th quarter of 1991.
The software requires a PC/AT with PC-DOS or MS-DOS v 3.10 or above -
with at least 1 MB of EMS, hard disc and floppy. It requires also the
editor, i.e., WORD for Windows v1 or other editor supporting RTF. The
programs include Q112 RTF convertors, a formatter, filter, and a
browser. It also includes filters and test documents. There will be
appropriate documentation from Bull.
The license agreement is for use on a single DOS system for R and D. One
should report on the usage. It for Universities and Public Research
laboratories for evaluation, research and demonstration. It is
initially until June 1992. UCL will distribute the software and
documentation, but users will have to sign a license agreement with
Bull.
DEC This package is regarded as a Gateway product between their CDA
products and OSI. The VMS release was made in April, the ULTRIX release
is on Extended Field Trial (EFT). They run on all current DEC machines.
Mitre has tested the VMS release, and found some problems with one of
the directions of conversion. UCL received the EFT of the ULTRIX
version on the day of the IETF meeting. While there have been no
discussions with DEC on how it will be made available to the IETF, this
is not usually a problem for educational or research organisations.
UPC/ICL The University Polytechnic of Catalonia (UPC) has offered a
version of their convertor between WORDPERFECT 5.0 and ODA Q112 for
evaluation by UCL. It will run under DOS and UNIX. The DOS version will
leave it to the users to have the ODA files included under the users'
favourite mailsystem; the UNIX version will be available both for SUN-3
and SUN-4 systems. UCL has tested one version, and expect a further
version early in August. The version tested by UCL would not be
suitable for release; it is expected that a suitable one will become
available during the fourth quarter of 1991.
The RTF-ODIF convertor comes from ICL, so that availability conditions
must be agreed both with ICL and UPC. The exact terms and conditions for
availability are not yet clear, but are expected to be similar to those
of Bull. It is expected that UCL will distribute the software for UPC.
XEROX They have confirmed the availability of their VIEWPOINT/ODA
software; it runs under UNIX on SPARCstations. UCL has not been given a
copy yet, and so must still evaluate it. While XEROX does have an X.400
which is integrated with their system, this requires the availability of
XEROX hardware; none of the Working Group plans to test this integrated
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system. UCL will give further information on this package when it has
evaluated it.
The XEROX software is a standard product. There has been no discussion
yet on the terms under it will be made available to the Working Group.
UCL plans to initiate such a discussion after the evaluation.
UCL has made available an Autonomous Active Mailbox for testing
purposes. This will allow people to send test documents by X.400 or
SMTP, and to Store, Retrieve or Modify them. A brief description is
given in documentation available on the infoserver at UCL.
Interest was keen also in MAC software, and the Chair agreed to contact
Apple - since it was believed they also had software in some relevant
state. It was agreed that in view of the imminence of so much of the
software, it was important to update this list regularly. The Chair
would provide an updated status both at the end of September, and for
the next meeting at the next IETF.
Discussion on Interests of Working Group Members in the Available
Software
From the discussion, it became clear that for any serious use by
participants, it would be necessary to have several copies of any
software in each user group. This was consistent with the current BBN
policy in the way they licensed three copies of SLATE, but was possibly
at variance with the individual licenses assumed by Bull. Moreover,
some of the Working Group participants said that even three was quite
inadequate for their purposes. After some discussion, it was agreed
that we should go back to those licensing the software, and get them to
agree to provide three licenses to a group as part of the IETF Working
Group activity. If individual groups felt they needed more copies, then
they should approach the software provider, and discuss the terms under
which additional copies were provided.
There was a discussion for what large-scale Pilots the facilities would
be particularly useful. Various proposals were made such as specific
Working Groups of the IETF, access to certain large databases, and
alternate representation for RFCs. It was agreed that prior to any
serious Pilots, it was necessary for Working Group members to get wider
experience of the current software available - or soon to become
available. This phase of activity should be called ``Experiments''
rather than ``Pilots''. It was hoped that this stage could be completed
by the end of the year. The initial experimentation would be inside the
Working Group, and the following volunteered their participation:
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First Surname Organisation to be Investigated
Ned Freed Innosoft DEC VMS/PMDF/DECWRITE
Peter Kirstein UCL SLATE/ODA, WORD, WORDPERFECT
Peter Kirstein UCL DEC-Ultrix/DECWRITE, XEROX
Jim Knowles NASA-AMES DEC-Ultrix/DECWRITE, Sun 3,4, DOS, MAC
David Lippke U of Texas SLATE and WORDPERFECT
Carl Malamud CONS DOS-based systems
Brien Wheeler MITRE DEC-Ultrix/DECWRITE, VMS, Sun 3,4, DOS, MAC
Greg Vaudreuil CNRI SLATE and WORDPERFECT (later)
The Chair will try to organise the availability of the Bull and UPC/ICL
software for Knowles, Malamud and Wheeler; Kirstein will, of course, be
getting it in any case. Kirstein will also discuss with DEC how US
participation in the IETF should be handled as regards the DEC software.
These original users would try to get experience prior to the next
meeting. Freed would plan to organise some integration of the DEC
software with his PMDF Mail product. Wheeler agreed to provide some
documentation on their experience with the DEC product.
Compatability with Mail Systems
The ODIF is not immediately compatible with SMTP, because of the need of
handling binary contents. The v1.1 of the SLATE/UCL software has
provision for UUencoding the data for use with SMTP - and even with
X.400 if the implementations required it. It was agreed that the first
experiments would be made with this form of encoding. It was noted that
the Internet Mail Extensions Working Group was adopting a different
encoding of binary. It was agreed that in the next version of the
software to be used by this Working Group, the coding agreed in the
Internet Mail Extensions Working Group would be used. Vaudreuil agreed
to put some appropriate parameters for ODA into the Internet Mail
Extensions next version of the document, including Profile (currently
only Q112, but eventually others also), Originating Site, Version
Number, and possibly receiving site. Details would be discussed by
e-mail. It was agreed that the Chair should discuss with the X.400
Working Groups both compatibility with their formats, and possible
interest in usage of ODA in their Pilots.
Documents Available on the Infoserver
A number of documents are currently available on the Infoserver at
infoserver@cs.ucl.ac.uk. The documents are accessed by standard message
systems, giving a message body of the form:request: ietf-osi-oda topic:
xxxx where xxxx is the name of the document required. The list of
documents currently in the collection is listed in a document called
INDEX. The documents are currently all in text form. Some will be made
available in ODA/ODIF format shortly.
Next Meeting
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It was proposed to hold the next meeting prior at the Santa Fe IETF
meeting, during the week of November 18-22.
Attendees
Jill Foster jill.foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Ned Freed ned@innosoft.com
Steve Hardcastle-Kille S.Kille@cs.ucl.ac.uk
P. Allen Jensen allen@audfax.audiofax.com
Peter Kirstein kirstein@cs.ucl.ac.uk
Jim Knowles jknowles@trident.arc.nasa.gov
Mark Leon leon@nsipo.arc.nasa.gov
David Lippke lippke@utdallas.edu
Carl Malamud carl@malamud.com
John McGuthry mcguthry@gateway.mitre.org
Geir Pedersen geir.pedersen@use.uio.no
John Scudder jgs@merit.edu
Gregory Vaudreuil gvaudre@nri.reston.va.us
Brian Wheeler wheeler@mbunix.mitre.org
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